A Group of Isalamic sholars in Kashmir has issued a fatwa that a half-widow can remarry four years after the disappearance of her Husband.
A huge number of women in Jammu and Kashmir have been living as half-widow due to the disappearance of their husbands in custody of the Indian security forces.
Human rights groups say the number of people who have so disappeared in the past twenty years of armed resistance against Indian rule is more than eight thousand. One fourth of them were married.
In all such cases the security forces deny any knowledge about the whereabouts of these men.
Their wives are known as half-widows because they don’t know whether their husbands are alive or dead. As such these women cannot decide whether to remarry or whether to wait for their missing me to return.
The Islamic scholars held three rounds of consultations over the issue and before issuing the fatwa.